What's New

If you look at our social media posts, living in India probably looks pretty nice. The reality is that we live in a bit of an expat bubble, and, of course, we filter what we post to social media.

The interesting thing is that it's the things we don't share that might have the biggest impact on us.

Once you listen to the episode, hopefully the photo above will make sense. This is someone we saw in Chennai who definitely looked like a kid to me (teenager). I wonder what his story is, and why and how he ended up driving a kulfi kart at 8 or 9PM on a school night.

A final note: we debated sharing this episode. Looked at through one lens, it will seem quite narcissistic - our feelings while we live in comfort. I hope what comes across is that this is the most honest, authentic way to express the magnitude and scale of poverty here. Hopefully it comes across as more empathy than sympathy.

We've actually been recording quite a bit since the last episode was posted. But, there have been technical challenges, some terrible content, and then we also got busy because, uh, we had a baby.

There were some good bits in the hours of audio we recorded, so we're going to try something new for the next few episodes. We'll take specific short clips from those earlier recordings and build episodes around them. This works better for us, as we don't feel like we're covering the same topics over and over as we record new episodes. We also get a chance to add new perspectives based on the things we've learned over the months since the clips were recorded.

This episode is about hiring in India in the technology industry here. This is an interview style episode where Heidi is asking me questions. It's a good, short episode about one of the challenges I didn't expect when I came to India.

Life takes unexpected turns, and so through a series of coincidences, we're going to get to live in India. I had a business trip to Bangalore in November, and then Heidi joined me a week later to look for a place to live and a school for our son. Through the trip we both got reacquainted, at least briefly, with an India that is different than what even Heidi remembers (she was just there a few years back), but an India that still is clearly one with the India I remember from 20 years ago.